Soft modes, resonances, and quantum transport

Effects of the propagation of particles that have a finite lifetime and an according width in their mass spectrum are discussed in the context of transport description. First, the importance of coherence effects (Landau-Pomeranchuk-Migdal effect) on the production and absorption of field quanta in nonequilibrium dense matter is considered. It is shown that classical diffusion and Langevin results correspond to a resummation of certain field-theory diagrams formulated in terms of full nonequilibrium Green's functions. General properties of broad resonances in dense and hot systems are discussed in the framework of a self-consistent and conserving Φ-derivable method of Baym by considering the examples of the ρ meson in hadronic matter and the pion in dilute nuclear matter. Further, we address the problem of a transport description that properly takes into account the damping width of the particles. The Φ-derivable method generalized to the real-time contour provides a self-consistent and conserving kinetic scheme. We derive a generalized expression for the nonequilibrium kinetic entropy flow, which includes corrections from fluctuations and mass-width effects. In special cases, an H theorem is proven. Memory effects in collision terms contribute to the kinetic entropy flow that, in the Fermi liquid case, reproduces the famous bosonic-type T 3 ln T correction to the specific heat of liquid 3He. For the example of the pion-condensate phase transition in dense nuclear matter, we demonstrate the important role of the width effects within the quantum transport